ORDER-2018-145 : Petition to the Great and General Court to enact a Special Act to further amend Section 3-10: Vacancy in Office of Mayor of the City Charter

Transcript (~20 min @ 22:50)

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▶ 22:45 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: petition to the great and general court to enact a special act to further amend section 310 vacancy in office of mayor of the city charter sponsored by alderman

▶ 23:04 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: right motion for passage a motion for passage by alderman wright one discussion

▶ 23:08 Speaker 1: need a second second i'll second the second on discussion the paper of the order

▶ 23:21 Francis X. Wright Jr.: great thank you um so as we all know we uh particularly the new members of this board know who had their first vote before uh what essentially was the selection of the new mayor

▶ 23:38 Francis X. Wright Jr.: um we all faced a situation that i don't think we ever anticipated which was replacing a sitting mayor uh midterm for what essentially will be almost two years um i heard a lot of comments

▶ 23:53 Francis X. Wright Jr.: from people in the community about this and um well i heard a few complaints most of them were

▶ 24:04 Francis X. Wright Jr.: just people expressing their view about how they thought it should be and most of the people who talked to me talked about how they would have thought it would have been a special election because there is almost two years at that point for the for the remainder of the term um so that got me thinking i i and i i looked at this provision in the charter

▶ 24:31 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and what i was also thinking about was how we fill a vacancy should we need to fill it from the board and how we go about doing that so So what this basically says is if we have a vacancy, and some of these dates or time frames are my thoughts, but are essentially placeholders for this board to consider, as you would expect,

▶ 25:07 Francis X. Wright Jr.: is that rather than have the midterm, essentially two years, be the bright line at which we either have a special election or we appoint a sitting mayor from the board, we make it 15 months. And you'll say, why 15 months perhaps? and it's because it takes three months to set up an election essentially as I

▶ 25:34 Francis X. Wright Jr.: understand it and it costs $30,000 is I check that again today it's cost about $30,000 for the put on a citywide election between the poll poll workers the police officers the printing everything that goes with having an

▶ 25:56 Francis X. Wright Jr.: election so the question is do we want to have so if you had 15 months you

▶ 26:02 Francis X. Wright Jr.: would have the election one year out because you have 90 days so the question

▶ 26:07 Francis X. Wright Jr.: is do we want to have a special election and with less than a year to go so that again is a placeholder I put in there which I thought was reasonable the next

▶ 26:21 Francis X. Wright Jr.: question is having the president serve as the acting mayor whether it be for the period between the time the mayor leaves office who the sitting mayor

▶ 26:30 Francis X. Wright Jr.: leaves office to the special election or from the time the sitting mayor leaves office until the next regular election no matter what do we want that to be the president of the Board of Aldermen and my thought is and this has no reflection

▶ 26:47 Francis X. Wright Jr.: any of us here because i don't think any of this is going to change before this year is out and i have all the respect in the world for everyone who went forward for for the mayor for the for the presidency when mayor dolan was leaving but i'm just trying to address what i saw as an issue and as it probably won't come up again for another decade or maybe even in our lifetime

▶ 27:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: But my thought is that the president Site as acting mayor for a period of time, seven days, 10 days, 14 days, and then we elect somebody to serve as mayor until the special election or until the next election. And the reason why I'm thinking that is a couple of reasons. We may have a president who has no interest in being the acting mayor or the mayor, and we may have a president who cannot do that, cannot leave their business, leave their job, leave their career. And what happens in that case?

▶ 27:50 Francis X. Wright Jr.: We may have somebody who went for the presidency we all thought was great to be president, but maybe we thought somebody else on the board who wasn't in a position to run for president because of other commitments they have in their life, but for the purpose of perhaps being the next mayor may be willing to step into that position

▶ 28:12 Francis X. Wright Jr.: and i don't think the fact that somebody has a lifestyle or a career that would prevent them from

▶ 28:19 Francis X. Wright Jr.: putting a hundred percent into being president of the board after a full day's work

▶ 28:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: should mean that they'll never be considered for a vacancy in the mayoral ship

▶ 28:30 Francis X. Wright Jr.: so I drafted in such a way that you would fill the vacancy from amongst the board after that brief period in which the president would serve as acting

▶ 28:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: mayor be it again a week ten days two weeks a month however long this board might see fit should it see fit and then we would elect a mayor from this body to

▶ 28:59 Francis X. Wright Jr.: serve until the next election so that's basically where I'm coming from with

▶ 29:03 Francis X. Wright Jr.: this probably I'll take a look at it you probably could tell it was drafted by a lawyer and you may have a lot of questions I know we've gone beyond the time of the regular board meeting supposed to begin so I'm happy to take any questions I'm happy to hear your comments perhaps we let it sit you can think about it you can ask me what i was thinking when i wrote this versus that should you choose to be it here or outside of this meeting if appropriate and then perhaps if you believe it's appropriate we could have the city solicitor come in and discuss it or we can discuss that amongst ourselves at another meeting but i just kind of wanted to get it out there and see what everybody thought and maybe get some feedback from the community so those are my

▶ 30:00 John N. Tramontozzi: thoughts yes thank you um i want to thank alderman wright for bringing this forward i also heard from many residents who were surprised that we were not having a special election uh they felt that they missed out on opportunity to vote for who they felt was the person and most capable of handling the job so i would i would agree that um um for in principle with this um this amendment to uh to the charter um uh holding a special election there's just a couple um minor things and if we if we're up for discussion um i agree uh in terms of um that

▶ 30:46 John N. Tramontozzi: That 15 months is kind of an arbitrary figure, and I would be more comfortable with 12 months. One thing that I think needs to be changed is section 310 talks about 15 months or more before the next regular election. What about that period of time less than 15 months? imagine that's supposed to be taken care of in section C but section C also says 15 months or more so it directed to you matter chair to the maker of the order should that have read 15 months or less it's section C subsection C instead of law because I think this is a section that we be talking about where there's

▶ 31:31 Speaker 1: less than 15 months you see what I'm getting at yes I see that says more

▶ 31:38 John N. Tramontozzi: twice so that might be a need for a change there in the language also my other suggestion is in subparagraph B until said next election I know what you're trying to get at but next election start sounds like more like the general election so why don't we just say until said special election set forth in 310 a as opposed to the next election until said special election so

▶ 32:13 Francis X. Wright Jr.: delete next election put special election I guess I see with your point and I understand it all the men just to clarify that yeah German Tosi the only thing and certainly we can clean up the language but it also would include if the next regular city election is held within 120 days then you would wait until that election but the incoming mayor would be seated immediately after that election so I don't know I have to go back and read the whole thing but but I understand your point I think we can certainly clean that up it's a great

▶ 32:51 John N. Tramontozzi: point I think we should we can hold it for further discussion and I just wanted to bring that to the attention of the board some some little minor changes that should be made but the point being is that I think it's a it's an appropriate amendment to our chatter thank you obviously alderman Rita you

▶ 33:11 Manisha Bewtra: have more experience in drafting language such as this one thing I was curious about is if um it's more preferable to say 15 months versus a specific number of days like 455 was what i came up with um when i added 365 plus 90. um is there a particular preference or do you think there's any risk in that lack of specificity in terms of just a weird unlikely

▶ 33:44 Francis X. Wright Jr.: situation which came to pass and through you madam chair um no i think i used 15 months because um

▶ 33:49 Francis X. Wright Jr.: i think there was already a reference to three months um in the in the ordinance and i think i went back kind of fell back on that i can't find it off the top of my head here but either way is fine um again i chose 15 months because with the three months it would take to set it up it would give you it would make you make it one year from the date of that election to the next act regular election but you could use one year from the anniversary of the next election however whatever you want whatever we want to choose is as a benchmark thank you thank you uh thank you

▶ 34:33 Monica C. Medeiros: alderman wright i uh too had been well i certainly had had a lot of feedback that a lot of people in the public in our last situation with the mayor mayoral vacancy that expected that we would have a special election i had intended to bring something forward after some of our fun here settled down and we had a new alderman on the board so i'm glad that we are looking at this in theory just I think this sounds good I too believe something more like 12 months would be more appropriate than 15 months and just to say that I I do think this is something that is a change significant enough that we should really be looking at the voters taking weighing in on this and so i don't think this should is something

▶ 35:32 Monica C. Medeiros: that we should send to the um the general court i think it is something that the voters should weigh in on i had spoken with the city solicitor a few months back and you know at the time and i'm wondering if if alderman wright has spoken with the city solicitor and but a few months back i had spoken with him and he said there was at that time he indicated we could certainly put something together now and then you know for it to appear on the next municipal election ballot even though it's quite a ways out it would not be inappropriate from what he had shared with me a few months back so i think we should take our time and probably do right thank you thank

▶ 36:15 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you. I have President Search followed by Alderman Ford.

▶ 36:19 Speaker 6: Thank you, Madam Chair.

▶ 36:21 Michael P. Zwirko: I think Yogi Berra said this is like deja vu all over again. So I appreciate the order. I do think that this is a provision when we went forth with the Charter Review back in 2017. You know, myself and I'm sure, you know, the other seven members of the Charter Commission wished that we had, even members of the public had brought up this section given what we've just been through in the past four months you know I could sit here and wax poetic about 18 months 15 months 12 months but I do agree with the point that Alderman Medeiros made you know just the little wrangling that we're doing right now and this is a substantive portion this talk discusses transfer of power to the executive office I feel is a substantive provision of the Charter which we were very very careful in the review to prevent ourselves from making lest we decide to put that before the voters so I'm in agreement on that point I would also just say you know a couple other things you know right now we just elected Alderman McMaster to join us well he'll be finishing out Alderman Mayor Infurna term then Alderman Infurna for a period of probably 21 months should we have a special election for the ward same time period you know I

▶ 37:38 Michael P. Zwirko: don't know I mean I just I feel like this is a little bit of Pandora's box I mean there may be provisions of the Charter we don't like there's certainly things that we did in the Charter review that I didn't approve of but ultimately you know we put forth after going through a very sausage making process of a year we ended up with the Charter that we had and you know we may not like parts of it but one thing we found out in all this turmoil since December is

▶ 38:05 Michael P. Zwirko: that the Charter works you know it works so there was never really any debate on the provisions there might have been debate on you know the shoulda coulda would've back in 2007 and maybe even during the Charter review but it works

▶ 38:20 Michael P. Zwirko: so I do agree that the section as written you know does leave a bad taste in the mouth of two years that's half of a mayoral term but no we didn't alter it the voters approved it I don't feel that this body can make that change on transfer of power in good faith without putting it before them I know we have a motion for passage before us but we clearly have a lot of discussion to do on this I would I would love to see this stay in committee so I'm agreeable on the on the on the merits of it I just how we get there is I think in another a question and i'll also add that about two or three weeks ago we sent the charter to the house of representatives for approval the one that we all approved in the fall of 2017 for what's that worth thank you madam chair those are all the comments i had

▶ 39:15 Speaker 3: at this time thank you um

▶ 39:18 Scott M. Forbes: yeah i appreciate everybody's comments here uh i i would definitely want to recommend to hold this in committee um just for the the simple fact that i would like to you know obviously people looking at this it may be you know you may have a day or two to think about it you may have looked at it today for the first time i'm not sure but you may have questions on it um i would like to hear what the city solicitor would have to say and get his input before we even had a vote uh i appreciate alderman wright and in making up the order uh on its merit i think it does make sense we always want to give the residents a chance to you know we want these we want these elections to be settled at the ballot box and i think that's the most important part about it so if we go to 15 months with 90 days as a special election that incoming person that would serve as mayor would have a year so i understand it on its merit i think alderman's work will make a great point as far as does that go down into the the position of ward alderman or alderman at large in case if that ever happened that's a discussion we could potentially have and maybe insert something i'm not sure but i think right now uh i think it's best that if we do leave that in committee uh i'm not sure if that recommendation has been made i think there's actually a motion for it to pass if that motion was withdrawn i would like to make the motion to keep it in committee thank you second that was a

▶ 40:43 Speaker 3: motion yes i'll second it we're running out of time i think the first one has to be taken back

▶ 40:49 Peter D. Mortimer: we do have i believe um the main motion was made by alderman Rita i second it i'll withdraw my

▶ 40:55 Scott M. Forbes: second thank you i withdraw my motion okay i'd like to make the motion to uh keep this order

▶ 41:00 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: in committee for further discussion second we have a motion to hold this order in committee by alderman forbes seconded by alderman mortimer on discussion alderman Lipper-Garabedian sure um

▶ 41:06 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: i would support that motion i think that's a good idea and i appreciate everybody getting involved and weighing in on this if you recall back in January when we heard a lot of public comments about having a special election and we decided that the that was just too compressed of a timeline to really open up this discussion so I'm glad to see that we're having it now and just for the the good of the order when I took a look at all of the different city charters around the state it's very true that there's a wide variety of how the timelines work and that we fall within a spectrum of some that have special elections much longer into the term for the mayor and some that actually never have a special election but I think on average we more communities seem to allow for a special election longer into the time frame than we have in our current city charter so this would certainly put us more it within the mainstream I think it's definitely worth continue to encourage the public to come forward with some thoughts on this maybe we can hear a little bit more public testimony if the public is more aware that this is something that's on our agenda and the next time we bring it up or we can encourage people to send us notes and that sort of thing so I'm glad that it's before us because it was certainly a memorable first vote for me in January and I'm glad that we'll continue to explore this. On the motion to hold the Order in Committee, all in favor?

▶ 42:31 Speaker 2: Aye. Any opposed?

▶ 42:33 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: This order will remain in the Appropriations Committee for further discussion.

▶ 42:33 Speaker 7: Motion to adjourn, Madam Chair.